i wish we cremated you by Gauri Kumbar

At night, the floor inhales. 

The boards swell like ribs, 

and beneath, my grandfather twists 

a blackened silhouette, spine cracking, 

smoke curling from the hollows of his eyes.

We never buried him properly. 

Decay claimed him before anyone dared shut his eyes, 

so he lay there, staring 

through God’s tangled fingers, 

screaming until heaven’s iron fist 

shuffled him into 

a deck of divine rummy.

I wish he had screamed— 

to warn us the fire was too fierce, 

that this body still hungered for its hours 

I watched his skin, dry as aged leather, 

flare like my mother’s silk dupatta 

as it soared into the flames.

Now he screams. 

I hear his ribs rattle, his voice a windstorm, 

recounting 

the weightless terror 

of riding the gale. 

We couldn’t keep him. 

To grasp him 

would be to summon the man 

who never refused, 

even when seraphs plucked his vocal cords 

like taut strings, 

and aimed them at me.

I wait for him to leave 

ornamented, through the front door, 

not dragged in a procession of silent murders.

One night, 

I sink beneath the boards 

to have and hold. 

He circles me,

as if forgetting how our bodies once melded 

when he was spit and I was the pew.

Now we lay, 

and I feel his heat seep into my bones, 

curling through marrow, 

lifting me from my skin. 

I drape my hands over empty eye sockets, 

and he dissolves 

like smoke through a keyhole, 

leaving me 

under my bed, 

alone with the scent of fire and leather, 

and the echo of a voice

unfamiliar.